


Sitting

by Meltha



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Gen, Insanity, POV, Stream of Consciousness, season 7 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-11
Updated: 2012-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/pseuds/Meltha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike asked Buffy to sit with him to keep the monsters at bay. Here's my take on what might happen if someone stayed with him.  Set after the events of "Help."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 9:45 a.m.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Mutant Enemy (Joss Whedon), a wonderfully creative company whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.

I'm not sure I should be down here.

Okay, technically, I'm trespassing on school property, which is a pretty big no-no to begin with, and I really don't want another run in with the Sunnydale Police Department… even though I'm pretty sure they wouldn't recognize me. Add on to that I don't think Buffy would be too crazy about me being here either, and neither would Xander, but I just sort of had to come back again.

When Anya first told me he'd gone insane, I have to admit, I didn't particularly have any reaction to it. Not a thing. Spike's gone nuts, and I didn't even care one way or the other. I just went to ask him if he'd seen anything weird around the school besides, you know, me. It wasn't until later, after my pseudo-spell wore off and things started moving normally again that I really thought about it at all.

See, Spike wasn't what I'd call a nice guy, but he kind of grew on me over the last couple years. He must have figured out what was going on between Tara and me before anybody else did, but he was the only one who didn't make a huge deal over it. When her family showed up to take her back, he was the one who proved she wasn't a demon. If he hadn't, I'm not too sure what the others would have done. After Buffy died, he was good to Dawn, and I mean really good. He didn't let her build her whole world around grief, even though it was probably what he wanted to do himself, and he made her get out and enjoy the life Buffy had let her live. When Buffy came back… when I brought her back… he even had the guts to say I'd done something wrong long before any of us realized what happened. Let's face it, I was not a nice person at that point, he couldn't possibly have done anything to me, and I wouldn't have thought twice about turning him into a toad, but he actually said I was wrong rather than mollycoddling me like everyone else did.

Now, Buffy never told me what happened last spring, but Xander let drop some not-so-subtle hints, and I think I get the picture. I am the one who gave Riley the infamous shovel talk, after all. Technically, there's a big old garden implement with the word "SPIKE" written across the handle, and that's probably the end I'd use first on him after what he pulled if he were still… well… Spike.

But he's not. Right now, he's sitting with his back against the wall, his head on his knees, being so still I'd swear he was nothing but a statue if I didn't know better. No wonder no one from the school has found him down here yet. I probably wouldn't have, either, if I hadn't literally tripped over him. He didn't even flinch.

Spike has messed up royally, so I guess that makes us members of the same club. The Sunnydale Chapter of the People Who've Gone Homicidal and Want to Be Redeemed Now Club, if we're going to get technical about it. I think the membership list is up to three, but one member is on permanent hiatus in L.A. It seems like I got to be a little bit luckier than Spike, though. I've had the very weird experience of meeting myself as a vampire, and I can say that is definitely not someone I want to be. Then, last year, I all but turn into her. And the scary thing is, I can feel that inside me still. I remember the power, and part of me wants it.

My friends are willing to let things go, which is something I'm really grateful for. Because, see, I know I don't really deserve it. They're doing it because they love me, so I get double bonus happy points. I'm forgiven, and I'm loved, and those things make it easier for me not to go kerblooey again.

And Spike? He's living in a basement alone. And there, to quote Buffy, but for the grace of not getting bit, would be me. Only I really don't think SuperTrampVampWillow, complete with leather ensemble, would have gone out and gotten herself a soul, though.

Forgiveness is a strange thing. Other people can give it to me, but the one who seems to be having the hardest time forgiving me is me. The support has made it a little easier, though. I'm not being treated like a dog who keeps getting her face rubbed in her mistake. Spike, on the other hand, is literally beating himself up over this.

He's staring up at me now, or, well, not really at me, I guess. He's looking about three feet above my right shoulder.

"You feeling better now?"

His voice scares me for a second. It's been so perfectly still down here.

"Um, yes. Much less psychotic. And, uh, you?"

His eyes flicker to mine, and he giggles. There's no other word for it. But there's something cold underneath, something self-mocking and shamed. He doesn't answer the question.

"Nice of you both to drop by for tea. Must go. Ta then," he mumbles, sounding a lot like the homeless guy on the corner, only more British. He stumbles to his feet and walks away from me, moving close to the wall, making himself as little as possible.

For one moment, as I see him leaving, I really want to forgive him. I want to bake chocolate chip cookies and hear him snark about American TV and see his eyes roll at something stupid Buffy says. It'd be nice to be the one forgiving somebody else for a change. I consider going after him to say something, anything, to give him a little bit of hope, but I don't.

I'm just not ready for that yet. But I think, just maybe, I'm ready to make a phone call.


	2. 11:45 a.m.

What am I doing here?

I've asked myself that question at least twenty times in the last ten minutes. This is so not a somewhere I want to be right now. It smells kind of damp down here, like when the plumbing exploded last year, but the school is so new that the odor is mixing with the fresh paint smell and the scent of newly poured cement. It's too new to be dirty, but too empty and dark and bleh to be clean, either. This place is just nothing.

I'm really trying to ignore the scrabbling sounds coming from the corners, but I'm pretty sure there are rats around. Well, of course there are. That's stupid. What else would he be eating? I wonder what he does with the rat bodies after he's done with them. Suddenly, I'm thinking I might be smelling another scent besides mildew and paint and cement and hasn't-bathed-for-four-months-vampire.

So, I just keep sitting here, quietly, on top of a pile of orange and blue gym mats that haven't been moved upstairs yet. It's dark. There are lights and stuff, but it really isn't any brighter than his crypt used to be. The whole gray, gray, and more gray color scheme sorta fits his old place, too, at least how it was until he fixed up the bottom part. But even back then, he tried to make it a home. There was a TV and a chair and a lamp-- okay, granted, a lamp he stole from Xander, but still a lamp. It was bare, but it felt lived in, or unlived in, or something. But there's nothing here. Absolutely nothing shows he lives down here. I guess he curls up on the concrete to sleep at night, with no blanket, no pillow, no nothing. I mean, that can't be comfy. It can't even be healthy. Can vampires get piles?

He hasn't moved the whole time I've been down here. He just sits, staring into space, his eyes all bugged out and his mouth kind of slack. I tried to talk to him when I first found him, which took a while because this basement is huge and he could have been anywhere. He didn't blink when I said hello. When I pulled over the mats and sat down facing him, he didn't do anything at all. I don't think he even knows I'm here.

He's not unconscious, though. He just looks... well... terrified. That's kind of freaking me out. The Big Bad is not supposed to get scared. Things are supposed to be frightened of him, not the other way around. I mean, there's nothing down here to be afraid of, except maybe rats and a few really big spiders or roaches, but that shouldn't make him wig. On the other hand, I just made myself wig, but that's a whole other story.

So, we sit. It's the fun that's not. He stares at empty air; I stare at him and try to figure out what's going on here. Why did he come back? Why does he stay down here? Do I even know who this is anymore?

Lunch break is almost over, and I have to get back upstairs. I'm not exactly sure why I came here, but the whole thing about at least trying to do something even if we know it might not do any good kinda seemed to fit the sitch. I don't know how I feel about him. There's definite pity action happening, and there's also a big, heaping helping of angry, too. But the guy who's sitting in front of me right now? Hard to hate him. He's too scared of everything around him. He's too not who he was. I'm not even sure what name to call him anymore, so, when I get up to go, I just skip that part.

"I have to leave. Biology starts in five minutes, and if I'm late the teacher will probably send me down to talk to the counselor for slacking off... and I so don't want to end up talking to Buffy about tardies."

I realize his face hasn't changed at all since I got here. He's still looking at the nothing behind me, staring through me like I'm invisible. This hasn't done jack for anybody.

"Um, bye."

I turn to leave and get about three steps away when I feel the hand on my shoulder. It scares me silly and I shriek way too loud, but when I turn around, he's standing there, actually making eye contact with me.

"It went all quiet. Can here the drip-drip-drip on the walls and the scuttlebugs in the ceiling."

"Um, yeah, right," I say, not sure how to respond.

"Quiet," he mumbles. "No voices. Made the voices go away, you did."

"Is that, uh, good?"

He laughs a little, and for one second, like, a heartbeat, his posture changes back to what it was before, back when he wanted the world to remember him rather than forget him.

"Yeah, Bit. S'good. Go. Don't think you should come back, though. There's bad things down here. The girl wouldn't like you bein' here."

"You think you can manage not to mention to Buffy that I came to see you?" I ask carefully, but he's wandering away, back into the darkness. "Spike?"

He doesn't turn around or say goodbye. He just leaves. As I open the door into the hallway to go to biology, I think over what happened. It was a really, really tiny difference.

But maybe it was better than no difference at all.


	3. 1:10 p.m.

I know exactly what I'm doing here.

I'm protecting what's mine from something that shouldn't be here. Heavy emphasis on the "thing." See, I know what's going to go on with everybody. First, they'll all be, oh, stupid Spike, we should stake him, what a waste of space, yadda yadda yadda. Then they'll just sort of put up with him out of habit for a while, kinda like dust on the top shelf of a bookcase; they know it's there, but it's just not worthwhile to do anything about it. Finally, they'll actually start to feel sorry for the big, evil moron, and that's when he'll be most dangerous. And I'm not letting him have that chance.

See, Buffy is a great Slayer and a good friend and all that, but the truth is, I've never thought she was really all that bright. I'd never say anything to her about it, of course. I mean, it's not her fault if she's just prone to being irrational, is it? She falls in love with a vampire with a soul. She doesn't kill him the first chance she gets after he goes evil on her. She runs off and leaves her mom and her sister because she can't handle killing poor wittle mass murderer Angel. She gets completely played by the first guy who blinks at her in college. She lets Riley slip through her fingers. She sleeps with Spike. These are not the choices of a thinking person.

Willow really isn't much better, either. Yeah, booksmart, you got me there, but we're talking about someone who decided to kill everyone on the planet last year. Again with the not logicalness of it all. And Dawn, she's just a kid. So I can see how all of them are eventually going to mess up and forgive this lowlife.

Currently, said lowlife is curled into a fetal position on the ground, facing the wall. Okay, so I kicked him a few times. It was just to make sure he was really out of it. Well, that and I happen to love the sound of my steel-toed work boots on vampire spine. He never moved, though. So, I'm just sitting here, watching him, ready to see him make a mistake and let it slip that this is all a big act.

He seems a lot smaller than he used to be. Then again, I guess anybody looks smaller curled into a ball on the floor, but it's more than that. He's diminished, somehow. All he does is lie there and sort of pant. One time, when I was six, my dad ran over the next-door neighbor's dog. It had pretty much the same posture, made the same shallow breathing noises for a few minutes, and then it died. Scared to death more than anything else if you ask me. But with Spike, I'm not falling for it.

He doesn't get to be forgiven, not after what he's pulled. So what if he didn't have a soul? So what if he went off and did a bunch of macho stuff to supposedly repent? The guy was possessed by a demon that made him something evil and inhuman, he had a lust for the kill, and he tried to rape Buffy. Those aren't things that get forgiven.

I stand here and stare down at him for a long time, and I can't believe the level of loathing I feel for this thing in front of me. I'd stake him, but I don't want to dirty my hands with his ashes. Instead, I settle for a couple more firm kicks to the curve of his back, and I hear a loud crack after one of them. Broke something that time.

Good.

I'm sick of this. He's got to be faking it. There's no way the disgusting pig that he is could ever feel any kind of real remorse. I grab him by his shoulders and drag him around until he's facing me. There's grit on his cheek, and his forehead is bleeding. Looks like I kicked him straight into the cinderblock wall at some point. Won't see me shedding any tears over that one.

"Give it up, Spike. No one's buying the I'm-so-sorry routine, so peddle it somewhere else. I didn't fall for it with Angel, and I'm sure as hell not going to fall for it with a scumbag like you. Anything you've got, you deserve, and worse."

His eyes have fluttered open a bit, and he's peering out at me blearily. I expect to see a cocky retort in those ice blue circles, but instead, I'm seeing something else entirely. The hell? Don't you dare look at me like that.

Don't you dare pity me. I'm better than you.

"I hate you, you worthless bag of crap."

He still just looks at me, and I don't know what to do about it. The couple of times I met Drusilla, his crazy, psychic chick, I got the impression that she was seeing a lot more than just the surface of stuff from the way her eyes went through things. His eyes have the same expression now.

"Sometimes, you smell like laughter... cruel laughter."

Every drop of blood in my entire body just froze. He just keeps lying there, about as threatening as the stack of textbooks piled next to him.

"Stop hatin' yourself, Xander. You're the only one left who does."

It's a moment of blind rage when I grab the plastic chair behind me and swing it down at his head, which is probably why I miss him. It bounces harmlessly across the concrete, leaving a pair of scuffmarks behind it.

"You know nothing, you got that? Nothing. Or I swear, if you tell anyone, you'll wish you were dust, you understand?"

He just lies there and trembles, but I don't even think it's me that's got him scared. I leave him and head back to the construction site. Coffee break is almost over, and the crew gets slack if I'm not there. As I grab a hardhat and safety goggles off a table, I fight very hard not to think about what the insane vampire said, but for a moment, I wonder.


	4. 2:30 p.m.

I really shouldn't be here.

D'Hoffryn is going to flay my hide, quite literally, if I don't get off my mystical duff and do some damage and soon. I can't believe I actually had to walk down here. Not being able to teleport sucks.

So, the lump in the corner is Spike now. He isn't looking too good. Well, I mean, his buttocks are still quite shapely, and his chest is nice and ripply, but he's sort of hunched over like he's in pain, and that just never looks good on anyone. That and he has this big cut on his forehead that looks like he was riding a skateboard and met the pavement too hard, but overall, he's just not putting off the big sexy vibes he used to.

Maybe it's because he has no confidence anymore.

Well, he went and made a pretty gosh darn stupid choice. What did he want with a soul anyway? I've had one, and no thank you. Way too big a liability if you ask me. Evil is a lot easier. Once you've got a soul, everything gets all morally ambiguous and complicated.

Oh, for pity's sake, I am not seeing a tear on his cheek, am I? He's staring at a support column and crying. I'm looking at the same post and it's not doing anything to me at all. It's not a particularly sad pole. It's standing there, looking all beige and smooth, not acting out the death scene from Camille. Now that would be an interesting performance. I don't think I'd cry over that; I'd be too busy being intrigued. But that's beside the point.

I suppose I should say something.

"Oh, cheer up, buckaroo. It can't be all that bad. I mean, so you killed thousands of people, and probably did some maiming and torturing and maybe even some jaywalking, but what's the big deal? Vampires do that kind of stuff, you know. So do vengeance demons. Well, except for the jaywalking. Unless they've had their teleportation rights revoked. Then all bets are off."

I'm not sure he heard me. Maybe the soul made him deaf?

"HELLO? SPIKE? ARE YOU IN THERE?" I scream at him thoughtfully.

Huh. Nothing.

Why would he do this to himself?

Well, okay, I get that someone breaking up with you can hurt a lot. My line of business, so that I understand. So, he goes all feral on Buffy, which is what vampires kind of have a tendency to do. Thus far I get the motivation. But then he goes off and, when he knows he has zero chance with her, makes a really stupid, dumbass decision to get his soul back. Now he not only doesn't have Buffy, he also doesn't have himself anymore, either.

He did the right thing, of course. But sometimes the right thing isn't the practical thing at all. Now, take me for example. I get dumped by Xander, I choose to go lose my soul, not get another one to cause me more trouble. Get rid of the pain. Best way to handle it. Nothing like a little good, old-fashioned, bloody vengeance to get you past any residual unhappy feelings.

It wasn't a very well thought out plan, Spike, but from what Xander said, that's about par for the course for you. Well, I suppose I should go see that girl over on Third Street. She just got dumped by her boyfriend of two years, and she's had over a bottle of Jack Daniels in the last hour, so she should be ripe for the wishing.

And maybe if I'm really lucky, it'll come out so slurred that I won't have to kill anyone.

"Bye, Spike. Have fun dealing with the emotional repercussions of a millennium of murder," I call out as I leave, and I'm two blocks away before I realize that I got the last part wrong.


	5. 2:48 p.m.

I don't want to be here, but I am.

I'm sitting in front of a smelly, incoherent vampire, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for something to come out of the shadows and fight me, because that's what usually happens when I take a break for a second. I still can't figure out why he's living in the school basement, of all places. I mean, this building didn't even exist when he left. He doesn't have any memories about it. It has no connection to him.

And suddenly I think I might be seeing the attraction.

I'm really uncomfortable, and not just because these stupid shoes, which admittedly are really cute, feel like they're amputating my big toes. I have no idea what I'm supposed to feel, and it's really confusing.

It was a lot easier when he was evil and we were trying to kill each other. That's simple and easy to understand. Bad thing gets stuck with wooden thing, bad thing go poof. No problem. Then he had to go and make that stupid deal with me when Angel was going to destroy the world, and things got all out of whack. Of course, the gold medal for wacky fun was when the Initiative made him chip-boy. Suddenly, I'm not supposed to kill him because he can't kill anybody else. I've never read that Slayer Handbook, but I'm betting that scenario isn't covered in it.

Of course, they probably don't have a section titled "What to Do When Your Mortal Enemy Falls in Love with You." If they do, though, I bet the next sentence doesn't begin with "Find a broken-down, abandoned house." That was an unbelievable level of stupid.

Of course, stupid was par for the course for me last year, and I'm not entirely sure that sitting here across from a guy who tried to rape me a few months ago qualifies as brilliant either. A really big part of me wants to kill him, but other parts of me are just, well, confused.

First off, I think killing him would probably be a lot easier for him than living. But it's not just that. I don't know this person. Spike I knew, or at least I thought I did. Big, nasty vampire who liked spicy food, Passions, and the occasional drinking binge. Always there, whether you want him to be or not. Guaranteed to say the most annoying, rude, obnoxious thing on any given occasion. Except when he didn't. Except when there were those moments when he actually made me feel... something. I don't know what. I didn't want to know what. I still don't want to know what.

I do know he's in pain, though. A lot of it. And fine, and good, and he deserves it, and why did he do this when he must have know this is what would happen to him? He's sitting with his back against the wall, hunched over, and there's an expression on his face that's taken me a long time to identify because it's so different from what I'm used to seeing there. I'd never seen it in his eyes before he came back. It's terror.

I don't know why he did what he did... any of what he did, really. Vampires can't love without a soul. Angel loved me, and Angelus didn't. It's that simple. That's why I never really got Spike and Drusilla. Was it some game they were playing, or did they really fool themselves into thinking they actually had hearts? The life he leads, nothing but killing and battle and fighting, it means his heart must have gone dead. He can't feel anything. If he thought he did, it can't have been real.

Why should he be able to feel it when I can't? I'm the good one, aren't I? Well, aren't I?

I stand up and dust off the back of my new black skirt. He just keeps staring off into space. I don't like it down here. It's too quiet and dark, and there's nothing to do here but stare and think thoughts that just aren't helping anybody.

I leave to go back upstairs so I can go through my amazing change from Buffy, peer counselor, to Buffy, burger flipper, soon to be followed by Buffy, vampire slayer. I don't say anything, and I don't look over my shoulder as I leave, so I'm not sure if what I heard after I turned the corner was really a small sob or just the rats. And I don't want to.


	6. 10:48

I never thought I'd be back here.

When Willow called this morning and explained everything that had happened, I didn't say anything. I just thanked her for letting me know and then hung up. I suppose it wasn't really polite, but it was either that or have a complete emotional meltdown, running the whole range of emotions from dumbfounded to irate to self-loathing in front of her, and she really doesn't need to hear that right now. She has enough to deal with.

I'm not sure why I got in the car a few hours later and came here. It wasn't a conscious choice. When you walk, you move one foot in front of the other without actually thinking about it, and that's what this was like. Left foot, get in the car, right foot, drive to Sunnydale, left foot, don't let anyone know I'm here, right foot, find him.

It's dark as pitch down here, but I can still see him, and he can see me. Even if he couldn't, he'd know I was here. I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to do. There are at least fifty scenarios running through my head, and I can't do all of them at once.

Part of me wants to slam his head into the cement until he looks like Willow's brother. The idea that he touched her is bad enough in itself, but that he even tried to do it against her will... well, Angelus is alive and kicking after all, isn't he? There are torture scenarios running through my brain that are so horrendous I think my demon is getting sick over some of them.

But there's another part of me. It's the part that remembers being alone and frightened in a dark forest over a hundred years ago, and I can still taste the bile that rose in my throat that night. It's also the part of me that remembers William: a complete idealist, never been in a scrape in his life, waking up to a load of fresh earth atop his coffin and screaming for two straight days in horror at what he'd become. Darla and I thought we'd wound up with another Drusilla at first. He was so innocent.

And we corrupted him so thoroughly.

Of all my childer, he's the only one to know what I went through, and I'm the only one on earth who can understand that he's in hell now. I don't use that word lightly.

What stuns me is that he did this to himself. That's where the self-loathing comes in. Angelus wouldn't have done it, but Spike? Spike was either stupid enough or brash enough to do it. Or maybe, just maybe, he was still human enough.

For the first time in a century, I'm truly his sire again. The demon and I both agree. I walk towards him and kneel beside his shivering body. The scent is powerful. He hasn't fed in almost three days, and then nothing but rats. Those things taste terrible. Okay, not as bad as yogurt, but still bad. He doesn't react when I open up a tub of fresh AB+ from Willie's and wave it under his nose, nor does he do a thing when I tip it carefully into his mouth and watch him swallow instinctively. I do the same with the second and third containers, and the mere fact that he's letting me feed him this way convinces me of how far he's broken.

"Spike," I start to say, and then it just drifts away.

What do you say to someone who's in as much agony as he is? What could anyone have said to me? I remember Darla throwing me out of the house and the pain of being alone, and for a moment, I'm overcome with tenderness for this lost child who has lived in hell. In spite of myself, I press one brief kiss against his forehead.

"You're stronger than you know, my boy."

Then, before I can think too much about all of this, I do what I do best; I disappear into the shadows again.


	7. 12:00 a.m

Busy day today. Lots of coming and going, coming and going, back and forth, up and down, coming and going. Round and round the mulberry bush the monkey chased me, but I'd already been caught, you see, and the lash is here and there and everywhere. Sometimes it's Mother who plies it, and sometimes it's one of them, and sometimes it's the thing here with me, but most often, it's my shadow. It lurks about all the time now. Hushing. Shushing. And I don't want to hear. It says ugly things. I miss beauty.

Know why they all went down here. Aren't looking for poor old William, no, except maybe for the one who fed me. Can't remember his name. It's like a song or a poem or some holy word I don't dare to speak, for I've had a dirty, bad mouth, and nothing pure can be in it again.

And there was the other witch, the one who's gone away, floatin' behind the scarlet one's shoulder. Said she's feeling better, she did. Glad of that. Big, nasty gaping wound she had. They had. I have. I will have. I'm cold.

I know why they were here, though. Know they came to see themselves and fear it and hate it. Nothing left to fear from me. Can't hurt them anymore. Just me. Hurt me lots. Not enough, never enough, pain and agony and dripping sorrow and fear like teardrops of acid on my skin. Fear of what is and what's to come and what this thing is inside me, and sometimes I'm not sure if I'm more afraid of the demon or the candle flame. Shouldn't they consume each other? Shouldn't that bring me peace?

Of all things I could have become, it's funny, so funny that I shudder and weep and scream, that a vampire should become a mirror. I am untrustworthy. Useless. Cruel. Guilty. Heartless.

And son.


End file.
